d.

It was a dirty night, as the sailors say. The darkness was something
that could be felt as well as seen--it pressed down upon one with a
cold, clammy touch. Gazing into the hollow blackness, all sorts of
imaginable shapes seemed to start forth from vacancy--brilliant colors,
stars, prisms, and dancing lights. What boy, lying awake at night, has
not amused or terrified himself by peopling the spaces around his bed
with these phenomena of his own eyes?

"I say," whispered Fred Langdon, at last, clutching my hand, "don't you
see things--out there--in the dark?"

"Yes, yes--Binny Wallace's face!"

I added to my own nervousness by making this avowal; though for the
last ten minutes I had seen little besides that star-pale face with
its angelic hair and brows. First a slim yellow circle, like the nimbus
round the dark moon, took shape and grew sharp against the darkness;
then this faded gradually, and there was the Face, wearing the same sad,
sweet look it wore when he waved his hand to us across the awful water.
This optical illusion kept repeating itself.

"And I too," said Adams." I see it every now and then, outside there.
What wouldn't I give if it really was poor little Wallace looking in at
us! O boys, how shall we dare to go back to the town without him? I've
wished a hundred times, since we've been sitting here, that I was in his
place, alive or dead!"

We dreaded the approach of morning as much as we longed for it. The
morning would tell us all. Was it possible for the Dolphin to outride
such a storm? There was a lighthouse on Mackerel Reef, which lay
directly in the course the boat had taken when it disappeared. If the
Dolphin had caught on this reef, perhaps Binny Wallace was safe. Perhaps
his cries had been heard by the keeper of the light. The man owned a
life-boat, and had rescued several persons. Who could tell?

Such were the questions we asked ourselves again and again, as we lay
huddled together waiting for daybreak. What an endless night it was! I
have known months that did not seem so long.

Our position was irksome rather than perilous; for the day was certain
to bring us relief from the town, where our prolonged absence, together
with the storm, had no doubt excited the liveliest alarm for our safety.
But the cold, the darkness, and the suspense were hard to bear.

Our soaked jackets had chilled us to the bone. In order to keep warm we
lay so closely that we could hear our hearts beat abov